


Born Again

by ImpossibleCherryBlossom



Category: Bomb Girls
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 07:18:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpossibleCherryBlossom/pseuds/ImpossibleCherryBlossom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Escaping a nightmare to live a dream takes a little help. </p><p>Takes place after season 1, because that just hurt and needed to be corrected. So I corrected it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Marion

**Author's Note:**

> The truth of the matter is that I'm a sucker for happy endings, and this is pretty much my new favorite pairing. Currently they really need a happy ending, so I wrote one. In detail. It's really pretty sappy, all things considered, but it's only purpose is for feeling better when life isn't going so well.  
> It's also, I think, the longest fic I've ever written. Fun times.

Marion’s mother was dying. There were no two ways around it—Marion’s mother was dying and then she’d be left all alone. She wouldn’t even have her father’s words to keep her company—ever since she came back all the things he’s preached to her have been sounding more and more empty, more and more false, and she can’t tell if she’s truly fallen into the well of sin or she’s just now seeing that he’s been in that well all along.

  
     “Marion.” Her mother’s voice, now whispery and soft and raspy and pained, broke her reverie. The boys were out selling God on street corners, she was home to tend her mother. It had been nearly a month before her father allowed her this privilege, after Toronto, and Marion is grateful for it.  
    “Yes, mama?” Kate—no, Marion—stopped her mindless housework and knelled at her mother’s bedside.  
    “Did she make you happy?” Marion visibly recoils.  
    “Who?”  
    “Don’t give me that, Marion, you know exactly who.”  
    “It’s not important.” Marion does not want to upset her mother.  
    “Your happiness has always been important to me.” When there is no response, her mother continues, reaching out a disturbingly frail hand and resting it on Marion’s arm. “You know I don’t believe many of the things your father says. In fact, the only thing I really do believe is that lying is a sin. I often think back on my life and wish that I had only told the truth.” Marion finally meets her eyes. “Do you love her?”  
    “I…I don’t kn…I…”  
    “Before your father came and found you,” her mother interrupts her stammering. “and put all these ideas into your head about sin and coming home, would you have said you love her?”  
    “Yes. Yes, I’m so sorry, I know it’s a sin…”  
    “It’s never a sin to love somebody. God knows that, even if your father does not even know the meaning of love.”  
    “But…”  
    “No ‘but’s, Marion. The only way you sinned was in not telling her the truth. I know how much you care for her, I can see it in your eyes.”  
    “Mama,” Kate is on the verge of tears.  
    “I love you, my girl. I want you to be happy. And when I look down on you from heaven I want to see you with the girl you love, not here in this hovel of misery, not here.”  
    “How, Mama, how can I make this right?”  
    “Leave again. Go back. Here,” she reached shakily into her copy of the bible, “Is money for the ticket. You have to leave today.”  
    “I’ll stay until you’re gone.”  
    “No, no. I’m your only way out of here. Go pack your things and leave this afternoon—God knows I’ll only last a few more days anyway—and I want to see you leave. And please, my dear, as my final wish to you—stay away. Find your happiness, and never ever come back here.”  
    “Okay, Mama. Okay.”

Kate had worked hard on not being a pushover, when she got to Toronto. Not letting herself be lead around or pushed by other people. Betty and Gladys had really helped with that a lot, but when Kate left and became Marion again all the subservience came back. She doesn’t think that’s what this is, though. Truth is, it’s a dream come true—literally—even when she’s confessing her sins and her deviant thoughts to her father, she can’t help but remember Betty and Toronto in general fondly. At night she dreams of Betty, every night—sometimes they’re in Tangiers or some other bar together and they’re laughing and Kate’s singing, sometimes they’re standing next to each other on the line carefully constructing things that sooner or later will be dropped from airplanes to destruct German towns, and more often than not they’re in her room, or Betty’s, just the two of them talking, sitting, holding each other. She dreams of the care in Betty’s eyes.

When she was a kid her good dreams were about heaven and her nightmares about hell. As she got older, her good dreams were about heaven and her nightmares about her father, and these days her good dreams are about kissing Betty and her nightmares are also about kissing Betty. In her good dreams they just keep kissing, and sometimes going even further, though she is barely even able to admit to herself that she dreams of that. In her nightmares, well, it’s exactly as it happened in real life, and she’s pushing Betty away and saying all kinds of awful things and Betty—strong, tough, Betty—stands and takes it. Cowers, cries, even. She can hardly believe she hurt Betty that much, so it makes sense to her when her mother says that lying is a sin. All of the other things she’s done that her father calls sins—none of them ever hurt anyone that much. None of them ever hurt her that much, that she has nightmares about them well into March.

  
So she does as she’s told again, and packs her bag, kisses her mother’s forehead and says her goodbyes, thanking her, telling her she loves her, and what a good mother she’s been all these years. Then she slips out the door, suitcase in hand, head held high, and Kate Andrews is born again.

  
This time, this time Kate will be truthful. She won’t bury Marion in the back of her head—she’ll answer all the questions they ask—she won’t let memories about her family consume her nightmares, because then they still have control of her. They can still come back and lure her away from happiness and back to the cold, broken-down trailer and the angry red welts and colorful bruises, back to the broken ribs and disfigured fingers. She won’t let her father come back to her, this time. She won’t let him control her.  
She is Kate Andrews, once and for all.


	2. Church Mouse

Kate arrives at the boarding house after nearly three hours on the train, and she’s exhausted beyond belief. She figures her old room is probably filled, but that’s okay. Today she’s here as a guest, and if…if need be she knows Gladys will let her stay at least one night. 

She tries to be brave. Not Marion, but Church Mouse—which doesn’t sound brave, but secretly is—Church Mouse, who left her home and family and learned to sing the blues and build bombs so that the Allies can fight soldiers marked by black swastikas. Even with this in place, even as Church Mouse, she still feels a not-insignificant bit of trepidation when she knocks on Betty’s door.   
“Piss off.” Betty answers from within the room—not angry, but bored. Sad. 

Kate leans against the doorframe. She closes her eyes, imagines feeling connected to Betty again.

And then she sings. She doesn’t even notice it at first, just kind of lets it flow out of her. _“I wished on a stars to throw me a beam or two. I begged of a stars and asked for a dream or two”_ She can hear movement behind the door. Swallowing, she pushes that last bit of fear, that last belief that her father is actually right (because he is so very wrong) back down and continues singing. _“I looked for every loveliness, it all came true. I wished on the moon, wished on the moon for you”_ As she sings the last line the door opens and she sees Betty once again. Tears pool in the corners of her eyes as she reaches up, softly caressing Betty’s cheek. She looks right in her eyes, just like she did that night in the bar. _“I wished on the moon for you.”_

By some miracle of coordination, Betty manages to pull her in for a kiss and shut the door in one swift move. And this time, Kate really lets herself kiss Betty. Their mouths move against and with each other and all Kate can feel is Betty, is this intimate connection, this sensation of lips and tongues and even the barest hints of teeth. When they finally move apart they are both flushed and breathless and looking more than a little wild, but Kate thinks she’s never seen anything as beautiful as this moment and Betty in it.   
“Am I dreaming?” Betty finally whispers, doubt and pain flickering across her face. Kate put those emotions there. She knows she did.   
“If you are than so am I.”  
“Kate” Strong, proud, fearless Betty crumples into Kate’s arms, allows her hair to be softly strokes, doesn’t flinch when Kate starts humming into her ear in a transparent attempt to pull her back together again. “I thought you hated me. I thought I’d never get to see you again, and even if I did that….that you wouldn’t even be able to be my friend much less anything else and I love so much and I never thought you’d ever…even like me like that and…” She’s sobbing again now.   
“Shh. Shh my darling, my beautiful, my sweetheart. There are all these things I wish I’d said, all those months ago now, all these ways to show you how much you mean to me. I’m sorry I panicked. I’m so, incredibly sorry I lied to you—told you I didn’t like you like that, ‘cause no matter how hard I tried to ignore or deny it I knew I did and it scared me senseless. I have never loved anyone before, never even thought of loving someone before, because I was taught that it was a sin and hurt for even looking. Most of all I’m sorry I left you, sorry I hurt us both. But I know better now. I know loving is not a sin, and Betty my dear I love you so impossibly much.”   
“Kate. Kate. Oh god, Kate, I…please don’t leave me again. Don’t go back again. Please.”  
“I won’t. Not for anything. I promise. I promise.”


	3. Betty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, the chapter title does not indicate point of view. This is not from Betty's point of view.

When they wake up in the morning, curled up together on Betty’s little bed in the boardinghouse, both of them think, once more, that they must be dreaming. When it’s the Blue shifts day off, and they can just lie there in each other’s arms as long as they want, Kate knows her mother is looking out for her, already at least halfway in heaven.

That morning Kate tells Betty stories from her childhood—all of it. From when she was just a kid and scared of nothing more than hell to when she grew up and feared nothing more than her father, who would hurt her and hurt her and say that he was helping her, tell her he loved her. She told the story of the first time she left and the second time as well, of her mother watching out for her, loving her no matter what, telling her to leave. 

Kate cries when she talks about her mother, and Betty holds her tight and kisses her cheek and says, “I wish I could have met her. She might not a approved of me so much though, what with the swearing and booze and cigarettes and not going to church since the day I turned eighteen.” 

At this Kate laughs for the first time since she came back, and Betty’s heart smiles to hear it. Kate’s laugh is surely the most beautiful sound she’s ever heard, short of Kate’s singing. 

“She would have loved you. She does love you, I think, for giving me someone to run away to rather than simply to run away from. It took much less convincing for me to leave this time, even with her sick. She always just wanted me out of there. I wish she could have gotten out herself.”  
“Aww, she will. She’s your mom. She’ll get out of that trailer and go straight up to heaven.”   
“You don’t believe in heaven.”  
“I’ve got a girl with a voice like yours and the face of an angel and the smile of a thousand glittering stars. I might believe in God.”

And Kate laughs again and says she loves her and it’s the most beautiful thing in the world.


	4. Both of them, together.

Life isn’t perfect, far from it. But it’s heaven anyway. They have to hide from pretty much everyone—except for Gladys, who would have figured it out eventually anyway—and that hurts. It hurts to refrain from kissing each other at the random tender moments that occur everyday. So they find other ways to show each other they feel so very in love—a particular, soft, smile or a gentle squeeze of a hand. 

Eventually the war ends, but even without active fighting there still isn’t peace. Half the men who made it home at all aren’t fit for factory work, and even if they had been there’s no way Betty would have given up on her job. They go from building bombs to building airplanes, and they save up. They save up, until one day they can buy themselves a little white house on a hill. It’s not exactly in the city, but neither of them minds the extra commute—it’s a small price to pay for their own house, with their own vegetable garden and laundry line, and best of all they are afforded pretty much total privacy. Kate can wake up in the morning to find Betty making coffee and trying to make oatmeal, and Kate can kiss her right there in their kitchen, without having to worry that the windows are open and the neighbors could see, because there are no neighbors close enough to see. 

After work, they go over to Gladys’s house and change into about-the-town clothes, go to the movies or more often to clubs or bars, because Kate’s a pretty well-known performer now, and more places are begging her to come sing for them. She still sings with Leon’s band at Tangiers, though, because she likes singing with the band, and because she can’t sing Miss Brown to You everywhere, and most of the places she goes she can’t hop off stage and wrap her arm around her girlfriend, kiss her on the cheek. No matter where she sings, though, Betty’s there. And no matter where she sings, she sings to Betty. 

Life isn’t perfect, but they love its little imperfections. The world is far from perfect, so they simply create their own world within it. And their world, the world with just the two of them, that world is as perfect as they’d ever want it to be.


End file.
